Short Takes

The December 1 issue of Booklist features a positive review of David Holmes’ forthcoming book, THE FAITHS OF THE POSTWAR PRESIDENTS. Ray Olson says, “[Holmes] is politically and confessionally nonpartisan, which allows him to write impressively balanced accounts of such matters as Nixon's betrayal of Billy Graham's trust and Obama's connection to Jeremiah Wright, who, on the evidence, was an excellent pastor who'd never been 'controversial' before the media started sound-biting his sermons.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution praises Anne Emanuel’s ELBERT PARR TUTTLE and claims she is “at her best recounting, in riveting passages, the landmark civil rights cases Tuttle presided over as chief judge of the 5th Circuit during the 1960s."

"You will want to read THE ACCIDENTAL SLAVEOWNER for the rest of the story!" says Bishop Woodie W. White in the United Methodist Reporter.

According to the New York Journal of Books, Vincent Carretta “certainly does justice to PHILLIS WHEATLEY's story.”

In the Aiken Standard, Whit Gibbons clarifies that the title of INVASIVE PYTHONS IN THE UNITED STATES is not “the title of a great new horror film” but a “well-researched, professional yet entertaining book.”

ForeWord's upcoming University Press issue describes Janisse Ray’s DRIFITING INTO DARIEN as “nature writing that rivals Annie Dillard’s fiction. . . [and] offers[s] hope in the face of overwhelming issues like climate change.”

Congratulations to Nikky Finney for winning the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry. She edited the 2007 anthology, THE RINGING EAR, which the American Book Review praised for the "degree of intimacy in each poem."